The first Crackdown released in 2007 for the Xbox 360 became a hit with its comic book styled presentation, addictive multiplayer, and over the top action. Come on, you got to leap into the air and jump from building to building like you were Neo in the Matrix movies. Who wouldn’t want to do that? This July Microsoft Games Studio will release the sequel, Crackdown 2, giving gamers another shot at running, jumping and gunning across Pacific City. To provide a little taste there’s a 1 gig demo ready to download via Xbox Live.
IMPRESSIONS
Hardcore fans of the first Crackdown will be happy to know that the developers didn’t make any drastic changes to the formula, so you can pick up and play with ease. Pacific City is still and open-world with tall buildings, narrow alleys, and plenty of areas to be ambushed by the enemy. For newbies, Crackdown 2 plays similar to a GTA game, where your character is controlled from a third person point of view and moves around a large city tackling mission based assignments. The story is very simple; you play an Agency Officer who must clean up the town from crime and corruption. What makes your Agency Officer different from average cops is that you can acquire heightened abilities via agility orbs hidden within the city that will allow them to jump forty feet into the air, run at top speeds, and leap from one tall building to another.
You play a different Agency cop in Crackdown 2, and the city is still packed with Mayhem, but this time it’s not only gun-toting criminals you have to deal with, now you have to take on zombie-like creatures who dwell within the environment. Honestly, the zombie freaks are a silly addition, and the game is better when you’re just going against enemy gunmen. If you want to shoot hordes of zombies, Left 4 Dead does it better.
The cell shaded graphics are slightly better then the previous game, but they are in no way eye-popping. The controls are the same, but this is something that should have been tweaked, because it’s still not easy to lock onto a target smoothly, so when you’re going up against multiple enemies, it may take a second or two before you can properly line up your shots. Driving a vehicle, as in the first game, is still not as responsive as it should have been especially when you’re trying to get in and around corners fast.
Two unique things about the Crackdown 2 demo is that one, it has a thirty minute timer, so if you don’t complete the mission objectives in that time frame you have to start again from scratch. And the second is for the first time you can acquire achievement points in a demo (100 GS), a feature that Xbox gamers have been requesting for a long time. But there is a catch; even though you get the achievements they will only be unlocked and added to your gamer score when you play the full version of the game.
Overall, Crackdown 2 is more like Crackdown 1.5, because there really is not that much new added to the game. Obviously a full decision can’t be made by just playing a 30 minute demo, but besides new maps, sluggish zombies, and a bigger variety of weapons, so far Crackdown 2 appears to be downloadable content passed off as a full game. Hopefully the retail version will surpass everything in the demo.
